SASS: SOCIETY FOR THE ADVOCACY OF SAFER SPACES

This guest post comes to us from Meaghan Baxter. Read the full article at FREQ magazine. 

A city’s nightlife is often the cornerstone of its attractiveness: a veritable playground of sights, sounds and tastes that serve as the potential backdrop for unforgettable experiences and infamous stories recounted endlessly among friends.

But bars and nightclubs also make many people feel unsafe, excluded and discriminated against, often on the basis of their gender, sexual orientation or race. In Calgary, the Society for the Advocacy of Safer Spaces (SASS) formed in January 2016 to increase the safety of nightlife venues and music festivals for vulnerable groups— namely women and members of the LGBTQ2S+ and multicultural communities— and to put an end to racism, discrimination and sexual crimes within these spaces.

The impetus for the formation of SASS occurred in the fall of 2015 after numerous harmful incidents sparked discussions regarding safety within Calgary’s nightlife industry. Co-founders Veronica Lawrence and Sarah Adams wanted to find a way to educate others about how to create safer, more inclusive spaces. Adams had also shared a post on social media about her experience as a woman in nightlife—particularly the “game of dodge and dash” that women are sometimes forced into playing to avoid men who have exhibited harmful behaviour in the past—which was shared hundreds of times and picked up by CBC in January 2016, Lawrence and Adams decided it was time to convert their ideas into more concrete action.

“I can’t speak for every venue, and I certainly don’t want to paint every venue with the same brush, but I know, in my experience, I have always gotten the impression in a lot of spaces that [the] safety of women is not always a priority,” says Lawrence, who began going to shows when she was a teenager and worked as an arts and music reporter.

“That’s not to say they’re intentionally putting women in danger. I think often when you have venues and spaces that are typically run by men, it’s difficult for them to fathom what it’s like navigating those spaces as a woman, or as a racialized person, or as a trans person, or any of those identities that tend to be marginalized,” she continues. “I have been very fortunate that I’ve never had a drink get spiked and I’ve never had someone do anything severe to me at a venue, but I consider myself lucky in that regard because that’s not necessarily the norm.”

Since its inception, SASS has partnered with local venues to offer staff bystander intervention training. These sessions are facilitated by the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, SASS’s workshop partner, to teach staff how to effectively identify sexual or discriminatory harassment, how to safely intervene in such situations, and how to honour the survivors of any incident that may occur.

SASS, along with the Calgary Sexual Health Centre and Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation, hosted the inaugural Safer Venues Conference at the Kahanoff centre on January 15, 2018, inviting nightlife industry staff to participate in a day of workshops covering topics such as preventing sexual assault, ending racialized harassment and discrimination, and how to better serve the city’s LGBTQ2+ communities. The event was well-attended, and Lawrence says that an increasing number of venues in the city are open to learning more about how they can help foster safer, more inclusive spaces.

“There have been a few venues that have been consistently enthusiastic and onboard, and the area where we have found the most enthusiasm is venues that offer a lot of electronic music events,” Lawrence says. “That community has always been very, very supportive and enthusiastic about SASS, and I think it’s because the harm reduction movement in the electronic music community has been going on for a long time. That’s not necessarily something that’s happening in the rock world.”

While it’s imperative for staff to be equipped with the knowledge to identify and intervene in situations of harassment and discrimination, it’s equally important for patrons to understand what they can do to help—and to recognize barriers and potentially harmful situations they may not experience in their daily lives that are commonplace for others. Our natural inclination is often to avoid getting involved, but Lawrence says it’s as simple as being mindful of what’s happening around you.

“If you’re seeing things that maybe look like they aren’t right, check in. If you see someone who looks uncomfortable or maybe looks like they’re having an experience that isn’t so great, just check in and say, ‘how’s it going?’” she explains. “I think we all have a responsibility to take this on as a community issue, because it’s not one person, one group of specific people that are causing it. It’s a community issue, and I think we all need to be mindful of the spaces we’re in.”

This responsibility also extends to bands and performers. Lawrence advises that when getting booked, bands should ask the venue whether it has policies related to preventing sexual harassment and racial discrimination, whether it has an all-gender washroom, and to question the reputation of the opening act, if not known to the artist.

“There’s a lot bands can do, and it doesn’t take a lot of work to ask the venue what their policies are on certain things or to try to engage in that conversation,” Lawrence says. “It’ll make a huge difference for the people that might feel threatened in a space that want to come to your show.”

Conversation and education are vital aspects of building a safer community, made even more evident by movements like #IBelieveHer, #MeToo and #TimesUp. Social movements such as these bring conversations that have been occurring for years in private to the forefront, demonstrating a dire need for change. On a local level in Calgary, it’s been the catalyst for positive steps forward in the form of events such as Creating a Culture of Consent: Helping Guys be Wise, offered by #CalgaryGetsConstent, which encouraged participants to reflect on ways the pressures of toxic masculinity impact their behaviours, attitudes, values, and relationships. They were also taught how they could increase their awareness and ability to recognize violence and understand its impact while developing and practicing tools to further conversations about healthy masculinity and healthy relationships with those around them.

“I think even painfully dragging these conversations into the public sphere has made it a public discussion, but I think it’s also made it possible for men to start engaging in these conversations that maybe they should have been engaging in all along,” Lawrence says. “I think #MeToo definitely brought a lot of questions to the forefront that people, in general men, weren’t necessarily asking before, and I think it made a number of men suddenly realize this is their issue too. It always has been, but I don’t think they thought of it that way. I think a lot of men thought ‘I’m a good guy and I’ve never done that. I’m not part of the problem.’ But just as it’s not enough to be not racist, you also have to be anti-racist. It’s the same with this kind of work.”

Lawrence notes that SASS’s experience thus far in Calgary has also been a learning process for those directly involved with the organization, which operates through a dedicated contingent of volunteers. It took some time for SASS to find its footing and navigate its role in the community, as well as build trust among the city’s venues. Calgary Sexual Health has also expanded its scope from offering workshops to a handful of venues, to working with everything from small businesses to million-dollar venues.

“SASS has been very fortunate that there have been a number of organizations that have popped up over the past couple of years doing similar work across the country,” Lawrence says, pointing out the Dandelion Initiative in Toronto, Project SoundCheck in Ottawa and Good Night Out Vancouver as examples. “We’re able to knowledge-share and support each other and have that network, so we can talk through situations together and provide information about what’s happening in our respective communities and share each other’s challenges and successes.”

Check out www.sasscalgary.com for more info. Building safe, inclusive spaces is a community responsibility